Coal Deathes and Pollution

A new report by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine estimates the damage to public health and environment from power plants and vehicular emissions. The report's findings are unbelievably high.

The cost of power plant emissions in 2005 was $62 billion dollars while that of the automotive sector (light, medium and heavy vehicles) is $56 billion. However, the report didn't take into consideration the effect of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Adding these factors would further increase the financial impact of these emissions.

The implications of this is that the damage of coal emissions costs around 3.2 cents per kilowatt hours. Electricity produced from coal costs between 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt hours. If the damage of coal was added, the total cost of coal would be around 8 cents per kilowatt hours. At this level, unsubsidized nuclear, gas and even wind would become competitive with coal power plants.

The report examined 406 coal power plants. The surprising this is that only 10 percents of these coal plants account for 43 percent of the coal's impact on public health. So if the US shuts down its dirtiest plants, 9000 lives would be saved and a 20 percent cut in greenhouse emissions would be achieved.

Source: EnergyWise Blogs (IEEE Spectrum)
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Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Could Create 4.5 Million Jobs

According to a new report by American Solar Energy Society (ASES) and Management Information Services Inc. (MISI), 4.5 million jobs could be created by 2030 if the US government seriously tackles climate change.

The report is titled Estimating the Jobs Impact of Tackling Climate Change. In this report, the net jobs created if the US commits to reducing CO2 emissions by 1.2 billion by the year 2030 is estimated. These net jobs created after taking into consideration the jobs lost during this period.

Last January, ASES has released a report titled, Tackling Climate Change in the U.S. The society found that the US could keep emission levels constant through 2030 by implementing energy efficiency measures. In addition, deep CO2 emissions cuts could be achieved if renewable energy technologies was applied.

The new report found that renewable energy and energy efficiency deployment would have a neutral or better net cost. This results from the fact that energy efficiency would end up saving the country more money than the costs required to deploy renewable energy technologies.

Source: RenewableEnergyWorld
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